People could be excused if, while reading comments on my column last week, they thought they’d stumbled into the manosphere. I mean, the misogyny was fairly dripping.

Some of the comments: “Brenda Looper should spend more time baking cookies and mopping floors instead of whining about women’s rights.” “You should ask her to make you a sammich.” “Speaking of crazed emotional women, those three nutty white, female, liberal jurors from the Clancy trial are Exhibits 1, 2, and 3 as to what some people maintain.” (Uh, 11, nine of them female, jurors voted not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility/reason of insanity, with one male holdout voting for conviction of murder in the Lindsey Clancy mistrial, and some indicate the prosecution simply didn’t prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, soooo … And I’m not sure where he’s getting liberal out of the statements from the three female jurors and one male juror who came forward, describing the hardheadedness of the holdout, who was often on his phone, and refused to listen to women, no matter their authority on certain issues [nurses on the jury answered his questions about medications, for example, but he wouldn’t listen].)

And then there was this one: “Bless her heart, Brenda truly does not see the gross inconsistency and illogic in what she says. Where to start? The silly notion that men can suddenly become women simply because they ‘feel’ like a woman, which Brenda supports, 100 percent contradicts and makes laughable her statement about ‘women’ being distinct from men. If a man can become a woman simply by declaring himself so, ‘women’ no longer exist. And it takes a true ‘feminist’ like Brenda that supports those men and boys pretending to be women and girls that take the spot of actual women and girls in sports. And don’t get me started on that ‘assigned at birth’ garbage.”

Others rightly noted that I said nothing of the kind (except for the “assigned at birth” bit, which refers especially to those born with ambiguous genitalia whose parents decide what gender they will raise their child as), with one telling that particular troll, “You couldn’t find anything she actually said in this article to debate, so you jumped over to your favorite culture-war issue.” (And again, recall that trans athletes are a vanishingly small percentage of athletes; some of the women who get caught up in the trans culture-war crap aren’t even trans, but women with intersex and other conditions that affect their hormone levels.) And if he ever actually paid attention to what I wrote rather than what he thinks I wrote, he’d know I’ve never said anything like “men can suddenly become women simply because they ‘feel’ like a woman”; the transition from one gender to another is far more complex and takes years longer than he seems to believe.

Thanks, though, for proving this point in last week’s column: “Women are capable of a great many things, but we’re still looked down upon and targeted with rhetoric on what it means to be a woman [emphasis added] meant to keep us fighting among ourselves.”

That culture-war diversion (hey, look at that over there!) is typical troll behavior, by the way, before he decides again that I call people trolls because they disagree with me. Nah, a troll is still, as I’ve noted many times before, someone who intentionally posts outrageous, inflammatory or off-topic content meant to disrupt civil conversation.

Some might say that giving attention to trolls is counterproductive, but in this case, I say not so much. Other commenters called out the misogynistic comments and the logical fallacies employed. It’s a small step, but an important one for common decency.

I will admit that the little sister in me really enjoys triggering trolls, and they were well and truly triggered last week, so their misogyny wasn’t even a little bit disguised.

Still, what was seen in the comments last week is more “manosphere lite,” and thank God for that. Most people luckily have had no consistent exposure to the manosphere, a loose network of online communities and social media influencers who promote aggressive masculinity, anti-feminism and misogyny, usually broken up into pickup artists, involuntary celibates, men’s rights activists and “men going their own way.” The Center for Countering Digital Hate notes, “These communities promote different ideologies and ideas of masculinity but are united in their view that women have attained too much power—by taking it away from men.”

Oh, such lovely men they are! And considering that men hold most of the power in government and elsewhere, I’m fuzzy on the need for a men’s rights movement. Then again, I am just a girl (sarcasm).

The Tate brothers are typical of manosphere denizens, but now finally seem to be on the way to facing in court various charges against them that include rape and human trafficking. Not that even that will compel some men to refrain from reveling in their male supremacy ideas because obviously we’ve gone too far by letting women think.

But why are men and boys drawn to such thinking in the first place? Should they not understand that women—half the planet—are necessary to survival of the world and as such deserve a say in their own lives?

Professor of clinical psychology Ross G. White writes in Psychology Today that we need to understand what the manosphere is offering in order to combat its effects, and he says, “It is tempting to treat these groups [in the manosphere[ as a single, coherent ideology. They aren’t. The manosphere is better understood as a fragmented ecosystem: part self-improvement culture, part debate circuit, part social commentary and, at its fringes, extremist. Some of its content is relatively benign; other material is deeply misogynistic, conspiratorial, and destructive. …”

“For many boys and young men, the entry point to the manosphere is self-improvement—a desire to become fitter, wealthier, or more successful. For others, it offers something particularly powerful during adolescence: belonging, certainty, and recognition. Adolescence is a time when people are developing their identities, questioning their place in social hierarchies, taking risks, and yearning for acceptance and respect from peers and the wider adult world. The manosphere speaks to these concerns. … But instead of helping them navigate that complexity [about their status], it offers supposed explanations, clear villains, and practical advice. It’s the influencers [like Andrew Tate] who profit from the subscriptions they acquire and the advertising revenue their social media accounts generate.”

Conspiracy theories about a “gynocracy” (rule by women, which is unsupported by evidence) abound, which helps keep vulnerable men on the hook, and further encourages the normalization of misogyny and violence against women and the idea that empathy of the type performed by Jesus is toxic.

White recommends teaching boys about the manosphere and its negative influence without stigmatizing the boys, and placing emphasis on the importance of men’s mental health. “We need to offer boys meaningful opportunities to develop skills, take risks, find purpose, contribute to communities, and experience belonging. We need spaces where young men can talk honestly about rejection, loneliness, shame, fear, and uncertainty without being told that vulnerability makes them weak.”

If there’s an area where men are truly underserved, it’s in mental health.

White notes, “The manosphere has understood something that we sometimes forget: Boys and young men are searching for answers about what it means to be a man. The question is not whether they will find answers. The question is who will provide them. We can leave a vacuum and allow influencers to fill it with skewed explanations, resentment, and commercialized insecurity. Or we can offer something better: masculinities built around connection, contribution, care, and purpose.”

Masculinity need not be represented by misogynistic gym bros and Andrew Tate wannabes who believe in “one-way monogamy,” nor should it be. Would the world really be so bad if men prioritized mental health, care for family and their broader purpose in the world?

Or is that asking too much?